Stage 1 of 7 · 10 lessons · ~6 months

Your language and how HTTP works

Get fluent in one backend language and its runtime, and learn exactly what happens between a client and your server. Everything later in this roadmap sits on these two things.

Start: The terminal and Git

Lessons· one lesson for each topic, in this order

Start with· follow one of these

CoursePaid
Grokking Python Fundamentals
Design Gurus · Beginner · $50
Python basics in a sensible order: collections, functions, classes and modules
CourseFree
CS50's Introduction to Programming with Python
Harvard University · Beginner
Free Harvard course with real problem sets, and it teaches unit tests early

Practise

Exercism
Your language track: small exercises with free mentor feedback on idiomatic code

Keep handy

W3Schools
Quick syntax lookups for your language when you forget how something is written
MDN Web Docs
Read the HTTP overview, methods, headers and status code pages until they feel obvious

Also worth your time

What Happens When You Type a URL? (Step-by-Step Explanation) (opens in a new tab)Read
The DNS, TCP, TLS and HTTP steps behind every request your backend will handle

Before moving on: Write a small Python command line tool with type hints and pytest tests in its own virtual environment, push it to GitHub in sensible commits, and explain every line of output from curl -v against a real website.

Tauseef's advice

Use a virtual environment for every project from day one and add type hints as you go; both save you pain later in FastAPI and Django. Do not stay in tutorials: once CS50P week 4 feels easy, start building small tools.